Jay Haze / Signor Andreoni - Time for Some Action EP

Jay Haze / Signor Andreoni - Time for Some Action EP
What is with all the split singles and EPs lately? They've always been around, even to some de rigueur, yet from the LCD Soundsystem/Paperclip People dual "Throw" on Planet E (half a reissue, I'll admit) to multi-artist label showcase EPs like Time to Express's second 61 Center Returning and Uzuri's From Chicago, Turin, Amsterdam and Dublin with Love, dance music is suddenly swarming with them. Not that I'm complaining—just wondering aloud whether the economy has made people want to offer two (or more)-for-one packages more than usual.

The recently established Italian label T-Bet has put out a fair number of splits in its two years, and the newest is instructive. Sometimes splits are simply convenient places to put odd tracks, or very simple ones. The latter route is what Jay Haze's A-side of the Time for Some Action EP follows. "Brief Ace" kicks in with hard, jacking drums and a mixed-down vocal snippet that completely eschews soft focus. It's not far from a tool, but it is still sit-down listenable. "Mighty Mighty" is craftier, with sinuous, unhurried bass pinning down drifting keyboards and vivacious hi-hats, its jazz and R&B roots showing to good effect.

Signor Andreoni's half mixes raw and smooth more neatly than do Haze's matched opposites; furthermore, his tracks are hungry and ambitious. "Flip Side" offers the kind of comfortable thump that shuffles obvious ingredients (snare rolls, disco bassline, chopped male-diva moan) with relish and charm. "Soul Burner" is bubblier and lighter, but no less skillful, a simple trumpet motif woven through the synths glugs and hi-hat skips and ground-digging bass like it's dreaming its way to coat check.

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